This greatly aids in understanding why the Governor never misses an opportunity to claim that Maine schools, still by most measures among the best in the nation, are 'failing' and why he was eager to release a grading system that suggests to the public that half Maine's schools are unsatisfactory.

...Whatever problems do exist with the design of our public bureaucracies, I would argue that we should exercise extreme caution in accepting uncritically the belief that we could not possibly do worse, and that large scale privatization and contracting of private entities to provide the public good is necessarily a better and more responsive, more efficient, transparent and accountable option.